(1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to digital television and in particular to a television signal recording apparatus capable of making recordings of television signals and to a receiver-decoder apparatus capable of receiving and decoding a television signal.
(2) Description of Related Art
In particular the present invention is concerned with the user interface for such a television signal recording apparatus or receiver-decoder apparatus. The user interface is provided to allow the user to control the operation of the television signal recording apparatus. Numerous aspects of the operation are typically so controlled, notably in the case of a television signal recording apparatus the control of the recording itself and in the case of a receiver-decoder apparatus the control of the reception and decoding of the television signal.
One of the difficulties faced is allowing the user to appreciate what recordings have been made. As the technology of television signal recording apparatuses improves, for example with the use of high capacity storage media such as hard disk drives, increasing numbers of recordings are being made. This can result in the television signal recording apparatus storing large numbers of recordings. The user typically will not have knowledge of all the recordings. The recordings may have been made automatically or by other users, or may simply have been forgotten. This fundamentally affects the use of the television signal recording apparatus. In the absence of knowledge of a given recording, the user can fail to watch a recording that would otherwise be desired.